“Station Eleven” is quote-unquote “gone,” or over, but far from forgotten. In fact, the expansive HBO Max original limited series that ended in late January just keeps blossoming in the mind as the viewer keeps soaking up what they experienced. Doubly so, “Station Eleven” was a word-of-mouth show that kept building week after week and some audiences are still undoubtedly catching up with it.
Based on the book by Emily St. John Mandel, “Station Eleven” is post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction miniseries created by Patrick Somerville, a writer on HBO’s “The Leftovers,” who wrote and created the Cary Fukunaga-directed 2018 mini-series “Maniac” for Netflix, and co-created and ran the HBO Max series “Made for Love” with Cristin Milioti.
“Station Eleven” in some ways defies expectations. It sounds—on its face— like a post-pandemic show: a virus that spreads around the globe creates a total global shutdown, millions are killed, civilization, society, and infrastructure like phones, computers, cell phones, etc. break down, and survivors are left to pick up the pieces in a more back-to-basics rudimentary way without much technology. But one, the book and the series were created way before the pandemic started—the series started shooting in January 2020, just a month or two before the pandemic hit the U.S. in a major way—and was never ever meant to be a reaction to our current, ongoing situation.
Secondly, while “Station Eleven” is technically post-apocalyptic, it’s certainly not in the dark, grim way of cannibalistic, marauding brutes depicted in a lot of typical, post-apocalyptic narrative, although yes, it does have its dark, disturbing and grim tones too.
And while there’s a cult-like, Jesus savior complex theme in the series, a fictional book that becomes a guiding principle for those that see it as prophetic—the antagonistic element of the show that yes, gets pretty dark—ultimately, “Station Eleven” might be the most optimistic look at a post-apocalyptic world we’ve seen in years.
For all its bruising moments, and the tears it produces, “Station Eleven” is humanistic, hopeful, and filled with such amazing grace—it’s certainly a late entry for the best show of 2021 and hopefully the Emmys do not forget this symphonic masterwork later in the year. “Station Eleven” is set in two eras, the before and the present, or the, “there is no before,” era. Gael Garcia Bernal stars, briefly, initially, as an actor and satellite character who ties all the other characters together—the various connections they have, like a six degrees of separation— and then the story gives way to a survival story of Jeevan (Himesh Patel), and Kirsten (Matilda Lawler), trying to make their way in the world after this deadly flu has wiped out most of the earth’s people. The show then, eventually fast forwards twenty years into the future and centers on Kirsten (now played by an outstanding Mackenzie Davis), and the Traveling Symphony she runs and is part of—a troupe of theater actors who put on plays. Ultimately, it’s a show about survival, but beyond the bare necessities, perhaps asking questions like, is the creation of art and passing down storytelling just as essential to staying alive.
The sprawling twists and turns of “Station Eleven” are very unexpected, and the show is artfully crafted both from a narrative perspective and a cinematic one. Filmmakers on the series include acclaimed “Atlanta” director Hiro Murai, Jeremy Podeswa known for “Game of Thrones,” Helen Shaver (“Lovecraft Country”), and Lucy Tcherniak (“The End of the F***ing World”).
I spoke to creator/showrunner Patrick Somerville and producer Jessica Rhoades (“Sharp Objects,” “Utopia“) as “Station Eleven” was coming to a close and they told me all about their ambitious, humanistic, sprawling orchestra of a show, how it was made, it’s cast and whether or not—given how they already know other stories are out there—we’ll get more “Station Eleven” stories.
“Station Eleven” is hard to describe because it’s a show that’s it’s a post-pandemic show built around a global catastrophe that kills off a lot of humanity, but it’s hardly a post-apocalyptic show, or even really a post-pandemic series. How would you describe it?
Patrick Somerville: Man, it really is hard to describe. I once heard [“Station Eleven” director] Hiro [Murai]say, “Station Eleven” is, is a story about a handful of people surviving before, during, and after a catastrophic event. It’s as simple as that. And that happens to be a handful of people who are loosely centered around the man, Arthur Leander [Gael Garcia Bernal] who knew him at least in some way or the other.
But it’s a spoken wheel type of story where [the other characters] are in his solar system, they’re different planets, but they don’t know each other necessarily. That’s why we’re following these seven or eight people. As our story is unfolding, there are a hundred other versions of “Station Eleven” unfolding across North America, across China, or across Africa in Nigeria, where one of the characters Leon is from. I can’t remember the term: synecdoche? The part for the whole is what we were always doing on whatever scale we were. So, this is a little story about a big story and it’s about a handful of people whose lives crossed that, just trying to be ok.
I, unfortunately, haven’t read the book yet, but I hear it deviates substantially? Can you talk about that?
Jessica Rhoades: It’s okay to have not read the book. I think reading the book and watching the series are very different experiences, but our hope is that they evoke the same feeling. I feel like the show matches the feeling I had when reading Emily’s book. I think for Patrick and the writers, it’s a pretty hefty [adaptation] in some ways. It definitely follows stories that the book didn’t tell and makes a few changes that are significant, but it has at its core. I do think the book was our north star.
PS: Yeah, and things that happened in the book became north stars. You skip 20 years and pick up with someone and you don’t know what happened in between. But as long as we know the endpoint to the story, it felt fair to make changes in the middle of the story that she didn’t cover. My attitude toward adaptations is you are not re-creating the text. You are creating a harmony of the text or you’re completing the chord that the text began with. If you’re doing that, then you’re doing the same thing, even though it’s not quite the same thing. And it’s not for arbitrary reasons, it’s because visual storytelling is not the same as literature. It’s not. And so, we didn’t have Emily narrating “Station Eleven” the show. So, we had to find a way to visually capture her spirit and build it into our story.
Right, it’s a different medium, what works for one, may not work for the other.
JR: It’s true, we don’t have the novelist’s voice telling you things or feelings. Though arguably the biggest change from the book is that Kirsten and Jeevan meet on stage and in the book, that is the entirety of their crossing.
PS: Yeah, they go their separate ways on that sidewalk in the book and never meet again.
Wow, that’s huge, ha! Their togetherness in the first half of the show is so everything to the show’s emotional impact. That’s a huge change, but now hearing it from you guys, wow, thank god.
JR: The interesting thing is that you never wonder why when you’re reading the book, why they imprinted on each other, why he’s important to her because the author tells you how important that is. It is just part of the truth of the book. So, you just keep it in your mind as you’re reading it and you believe it. And I think that to tell that story as a visual medium, you needed to really understand what they meant to each other and why.
Filming started January 2020, the pandemic hits in February in the U.S., you of all people have done your homework know where this is heading and you shut down by March restarting a few months later. That must have been surreal.
PS: Certainly. “Station Eleven” was made by a gigantic group of working artists who never would have chosen to make a show about a global pandemic during a global pandemic going on, you know? We were deep into our making our thing when that happened, and it is pretty eerie, sure. But also, we were far enough along that we knew who and what was enough as a show already—you know what I mean? We knew we just continue going in the direction that we had initially set out?
If our version of the story dovetailed with real-life events? Great. And if it didn’t? That’s ok too. We started with the right intentions. We were never chasing an opportunistic moment hoping that people would be hungry for this story by the time we were done. And I think because we started for the right reasons before the pandemic even happened, it felt okay to keep going.
The strange destiny and coincidence of it all kind of mirrors the show and its strange, inexplicable connections and ideas of fate.
JR: Yes, and one of the things the book and series takes as truth is, after a global pandemic, people would still want to make art. When we had to find a way back together to keep making this show, it was very clear that that is what you do as creatives and artists. You just keep making your art, regardless.
PS: Also? When there’s a problem to solve, everyone is a creative. What I loved about the show was that it was an opportunity to make art less fancy, and make it— not that it’s an elitist activity— but it’s artisanal, it’s problem-solving, because there’s a specific need. It’s not costume design, it’s sewing because there are clothes to made out of need.